Bohemian Scents

Poesy plus Polemics

“Booksellers Along the Seine”
Painting by Edouard Cortes
From wikipaintings.org

(The opening lines appeared in my earlier poem “Nosegays.” But they stuck in my mind and so I give them a fuller story here.)

cracked-leather mustiness
seeps from dry bindings
I rescued from tumbling
dust covered stacks
crowding bookseller stalls
hung from medieval quays
overlooking the Seine
from Rive Gauche where
sweet sleep is no proper
companion of night when
young poets old painters
and passionate lovers
perform their best work
in fin de siècle garrets
whose earthiness settles
in seams of stale smoke

revolution still sweats
in the mist stealing
over dry friable sills
caught in cracks of
dead candlewax clumps
lifeless flowers in
hammered tin vases
smell moldy beside
acrid turpentine cups
oily palettes of pigments
intended to breathe
life back into the colorless
stiffened thin stems
mean decades of meals
made of river fish
sautéed in garlic…

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